While the primary was going on, a bombshell was dropped.

[Pale Blue Dot]

If think it was intentionally dropped today, on a day when it would be largely ignored.

Please see this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=334030

What does this mean? It means that it was known that it was a hijacking right from the beginning. It puts the lie to several Bush assertions, and make the actions of several administration officials even harder to understand. And it make the failure to scramble the planes even more suspicious.

Don't let this get buried today.

[peekaloo]

1. CBS News played a good chunk of this tape tonight.

dots are being connected.

[Cleita]

9. The local LA news outlet did too and it reaches a large audience in

So. California.

[RainDog]

2. FAA and NORAD

who will they designate to take the fall...you know the 9-11 commission isn't going to tell the truth about Bush (gee, that's a really bad pilot)...

was there a time stamp on the recording?

The airline knew for how long that a plane was hijacked and off track and veering into some of the most populous areas of the country.

And who did what?

Everyone did nothing.

They knew a plane had been hijacked when the other plane also veered off course and also headed in the same direction as a plane which had been flown by hijackers into the WTC.

Everyone did nothing.

they let it happen.

[Oilwellian]

3. Time of the recording

The call that was recorded occurred 23 minutes before it hit the WTC North Tower. 23 very looooong minutes of doing NOTHING.

[frank frankly]

4. fuck

23 minutes...

time for shrub to read half a page to gradeschoolers.

[Unforgiven]

6. One

syllable words only.

[GringoTex]

19. Who the hell is "they"?

There are thousands of planes in the sky at any one time. They veer off course all the time for one reason or another. You really think the president is notified everytime this happens? The hard ignorance on this board is mindboggling.

[qanda]

23. Wow! I guess you don't remember Payne Stewart

You should check your facts before you call someone ignorant.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. This was reported right after 9-11

The stewardesses on the first plane were able to get through to people on the ground and described in great detail the events has they occurred. Even though they hadn't released the actual transcripts, the media had pretty good accounts of the conversations. These stewardesses were very brave and level headed women. Their accounts are chilling to say the least.

However, these accounts are further proof that NORAD and the FAA should have known that the US was under attack before the 1st plane hit the WTC. And that if SOP was followed, Bu$h knew we were under attack, before he got to Booker.


Edit: Adding link to original report

The Telegraph

Last words from Flight 11: 'I can see water and buildings. Oh my God!'
By Philip Delves Broughton in New York
(Filed: 21/09/2001)

A stewardess's final call has provided a horrifying picture of the aircraft's last moments, writes Philip Delves Broughton in New York

THE hijackers had slit the throat of a passenger and broken into the cockpit when Madeline Amy Sweeney, a stewardess aboard the American Airlines Flight 11, first began to panic.

"I see water and buildings," she said in a telephone call to her ground manager in Boston. "Oh my God! Oh my God!"

<snip>

Her final call, the most graphic yet known about, came about 20 minutes after Flight 11 took off from Logan airport in Boston at 7.45am, carrying 81 passengers and nine flight attendants. It is not clear whether she was using a mobile or on-board telephone.

[Oilwellian]

10. There must have been two separate calls

The call I was listening to while watching the 911 Commission on CSpan today, involved a woman who was calling 23 minutes before the plane crashed into WTC North. In the middle of that call, they lost contact with her and that's all I saw. I may have stepped away and just missed the second call.

What your post describes was a call that occurred right before the crash. I'm not sure if contact was eventually regained and it was the same woman, or there were two different women making calls. Perhaps CSpan will re-air the hearing. Ah yes, it'll be showing again on CSpan 2 at 2:40AM EST. How convenient that it's airing when most everyone is sleeping.

This proves Bush knew long before he entered that classroom in Florida that at the very least, a hijacking was in progress. How could he possibly have thought it was "one terrible pilot" when he knew it had nothing to do with the pilot who probably had his throat slashed?

[Sapphocrat]

11. Did anybody hear the 'water and buildings' line today?

They played a long piece of the tape on Jim Lehrer today, but no "water and buildings" line -- which I also remember being reported widely very soon after 9/11.

I also remember more than a few DUers commenting how "staged" that sounded (as if a flight attendant wouldn't recognize exactly where the plane was; i.e., right over NYC).

No, no, no, I'm not tin-foil-hatting at all here -- just curious if anybody has finally, actually heard that one memorable line after all this time.

[Oilwellian]

12. No! I didn't hear it either!

That's what has me all confused as described in a previous post. I know ABC Nightly News also did a piece on it but can't find the transcript. I listened to both CSpan and heard the Nightly News piece and neither time, heard the "water & building" portion. How very weird.

[foreigncorrespondent]

13. Some links for you

Washington - A chilling telephone call from a flight attendant aboard American Airlines Flight 11 details for the first time the frantic, violent path of the doomed airliner as hijackers slit the throat of a passenger and stormed the cockpit.

"I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!" Madeline Amy Sweeney told a ground manager in Boston after the hijacked plane took a sudden and unexpected detour, according to an investigative document compiled by the FBI and reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.nynewsday.com/ny-uscell212376910sep21,0,4996433.story


A flight attendant's desperate telephone call has provided new details of the last moments of Flight 11 before it hit the World Trade Center.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1556096.stm


Last words from Flight 11: 'I can see water and buildings. Oh my God!'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/21/wterr21.xml

There is plenty more documented reports of this out there is you google: "I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!" "Madeline Amy Sweeney"

[Oilwellian]

14. You'll find this VERY interesting

The tape played at the 911 Commission hearing was that of another stewardess. See post #6 in this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=334030.

It was a tape of flight attendent Betty Ong talking to some man, not clear who. She said that the Number 1 and Number 5 have been stabbed (not clear what that refers to). She seemed calm, and the guy on the other end of the call says to her that he is recording the call. SHe said that the cockpit door was locked and she couldn't get in. Why did the guy say that he was recordinng the call? Why would he say that? Who is he? There was confusion over the flight number: She had to say that they were on Flight 11, when the guy said it was Flight 12, there was some confusion there. She also said, "Boston to LA," why would she need to say that? It was weird. My girlfriend and I thought she had a weird affect.

Apparently, Betty Ong made a phone call as well yet somehow the media is making it sound as though there was only one call made. The media is saying Madeline Amy Sweeney made the call 20 minutes after the plane took off at 7:45 AM but it couldn't have been her calling at that time. Her call was being recorded at the time the plane hit the tower at 8:46AM. The official time the ATC reported no response from the plane was 8:05...the same time that Betty Ong's call was being reported.

Isn't it odd how the media isn't reporting 2 separate calls?

[Sapphocrat]

16. Interesting!

That is bizarre.

The one I heard (twice today) was between Betty Ong and a female -- uh, gate agent? -- on the ground.

Curiouser and curiouser.

I'll check out the other thread -- thanks for the tip!

[Sapphocrat]

15. Yeah, but...

...has anybody heard the "water and buildings" part of the tape? Outside the 9/11 Commission, I mean.

I'd be curious to know what you hear on the ABC news (assuming they'll cover it, and assuming you watch the news tonight).

[jokerman93]

7. Where the F' were all these recordings 2 years ago?

It's as if no human being heard them that morning. Where were these people when the official bullshit starting oozing out of the cable channels and the rest of the blighted Amerikan media?

Yeah I'm sick. Sick to death and near tears.

[mike1963]

8. I clearly remember the "water and buildings....oh my god" from a few days

after 9/11, but the shock of the whole enterprise was so huge that almost nobody was connecting the dots on the timeline then.

But you wouldn't have seen any analysis in the US media since even though the internet is full of information.

[DoYouEverWonder]

17. Only one call was recorded, the one from Ong

However, Sweeney got a call through that began about 20 minutes after the plane left Logan. She was able to talk for about 25 minutes until the she said, oh my god, I see buildings and water and then the plane hit the WTC.

Sweeney's calls were not recorded, thus there is no transcript. It is disingenuous to say the least, for the 9-11 commission to act as if these are new revelations or that there was only one call, the one from Ong.

Here is a better summary of what happened on Flight 11, that ABC News published in July, 2002.



ABC News

July 18


July 18 — On the morning of Sept. 11, American Airlines ground manager Michael Woodward received a phone call that immediately got his full attention.

"Listen, and listen to me very carefully. I'm on Flight 11. The airplane has been hijacked," said the voice on the other end. The caller was Amy Sweeney, a flight attendant on board American Airlines Flight 11, which had just been hijacked on its way from Boston to Los Angeles.

Over the next 25 minutes, Sweeney, a 13-year veteran with the airline, calmly relayed information to Woodward that would later be crucial in helping the FBI identify the men who hijacked the plane and flew it into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

<snip>

Ong's call came through to Vanessa Minter, an agent at the airline's reservation center in Raleigh, N.C. Minter conferenced in Nydia Gonzales, whose responsibilities include dealing with security issues.

<snip>

The first four minutes of Ong's call were recorded, but the FBI has not released the tape to the public. Sweeney's phone call was not recorded, but Woodward took notes that would later become crucial to the FBI's investigation. Without Sweeney's calm reporting, the plane might have crashed with no one certain the man in charge was tied to al Qaeda.

[Snappy]

18. 911 Commision

I watch a couple of hours of it. Doesn't seem to be a hard investigation of the events. Maybe a whitewash?

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. It's sure starting to look that way

I heard a comment on the news that the 9-11 commission claims that no one had specific information about al Qaeda planning to fly airplanes into buildings? This is complete and utter bullshit. The 9-11 commission heard extensive testimony about Project Bojinka. Now they are pretending it never happened? The 9-11 commission is going to go the way of the Hutton inquiry, a whitewash to protect the people they serve.

[0007]

21. I fell asleep -

Wish Thomas Kean was clean and had no connections with the administration. WTF," Kissinger could have done just as well, 'eh?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

22. BINGO!